


Still

by agelade



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Gen, discussions of assault, fitzdaisy brotp
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-01
Updated: 2018-04-01
Packaged: 2019-04-17 01:28:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14177607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agelade/pseuds/agelade
Summary: Fitz and Daisy are on lockdown as the enemy attempts to take over the base.This story was written before the framework arc was over, and is part of a larger, unfinished wip that would explore post-framework plot points. As such, some characters are alive who canonically died, but they don't really feature, so. I had some things planned for this story, but since it will likely not be finished and I desperately needed some Fitz/Daisy bros after 5x14, I polished this scene up to post. So here, have just literally 5800 words of Fitz and Daisy bonding. Maybe it will help you too.





	Still

_ It’s dark, where they are. Dark like deep sea, ninety feet of it, but he’s wrestled with that and he’s over that and anyway the pressure’s wrong so-- _

“Fitz. Fitz -- you with me?”

Daisy. Her voice came before her face, he turned toward it and there she was, dark but getting brighter, slow but coming toward him, talking under -- under water. He blinked and she came fully into focus, sped up to normal and she tapped his cheek where he was sat slumped against the wall.

“Fitz, Fitz--”

“Yeah, I can hear you, what.” A whisper, a croak, his voice was not his, bruised or crushed or just gone. The sound of his own voice froze him mid-waving her off. She didn’t notice.

“Okay, grumpy. I was just making sure you were okay.”

“Ehh.” He found her face again, lost, losing the words. Quiet: “Right, sorry.” 

That, she noticed. Dropped right down onto her knees and hovered her hands over him in new concern. “Hey, hey. What’s up? What do I--” 

“Nothing, it’s fine. I just...”  _ He can’t go on. Suddenly all he can hear is the squeak of his sneakers as they scrabble for purchase on the polished floor, a harsh, desperate sound that echoes before he’s dragged upward from behind, one huge arm around his throat-- _

“Hey!”

Daisy. Again.

He scrambled to find himself. “I was, I just--”

“Okay, calm down. We’re okay here.” Daisy got up and moved toward the door, presumably checking to see if the coast was clear, or if help was nearby, or if she could find an escape from him and his feeble bloody strangeness.

“Are we? Okay?”

She turned back to him, shrugged. “I think so.” Pressed her lips together and shook her head. “Who knows.”

He looked up at her without even trying to get up from the floor. “Mack...”

“That wasn’t Mack. Or I mean it was. Just.”

“Not. Him.”

“Yeah.”

Too quiet for too long. She broke it. “Mack would never hurt you intentionally.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time we weren’t on the same side and I had no idea.”

“Yeah,” she said. “But he wouldn’t do  _ that _ .” Daisy sat, nodding as she went to where his own fingers ghosted over his neck, bruises warming under his skin, blue he thought, purple, accusing betrayal. “He’d never.”

Fitz looked up at her. “Don’t think so?”

She shook her head.

“Yeah, me neither. Still.”

He’d dragged Fitz right up off the ground. Stopped him right in the middle of a panicked sentence. Fit his elbow joint right over Fitz’s adam’s apple, dragging him close, said to him,  _ night night, Turbo _ , and squeezed. Laughed when Fitz tried to kick at him with a burst of adrenaline, a burst of  _ no no no no _ \-- 

The black scattershot of oxygen deprivation was already popping across his vision by the time they both dropped, Mack sprawled over Fitz, arm pinned against Fitz’ carotid, saved but damned all the same, vision leeching away, until he found himself waking back up in a closet, sounds of battle now far away.

“You’re okay, Fitz.”

“I know.”

“Comms are down, phones too. Can you move?”

He looked up at her, she was moving around again, she could never sit still. Neither could he, usually. She wanted to fight, she wanted to be  _ useful _ .  “I... eh...”

“Okay.” She smiled, forced but she was his friend, so he knew it wasn’t out of politeness but out of just her own desire to do something productive.

He could understand.

“Maybe--” He put his hands down to push up and agony flared.

“Fitz, what--”

He wrinkled his face up, got his breath under it, grasped his shoulder with his other hand. “When Mack fell on me, maybe.”

Daisy made a face. “My bad.”

“Thank you so much.”

“I said my bad.”

“Just a very fine rescue all around.”

“I’d jokingly punch you in the shoulder, but...”

“S’fine. We’ll just pretend y’did and move on. Can you set it?”

“What, relocate your dislocated shoulder? No, Fitz. I can’t  _ relocate  _ your  _ dislocated shoulder _ .”

He waved her off, shifted with some effort. “Oh, don’t be so dramatic. This is basic field medic stuff.”

“So you know how to do it?”

He winked open an eye at her. “Well. No. But may I remind you that I never passed my field evaluation. So.”

“I wouldn’t be proud of that, Fitz.”

“I’m not, I just--” He faltered. “Jem’ll fix it. We have to find Jemma.” He put his head down in preparation to get up again, hissed through his teeth. Daisy’s hands were on his chest pushing him back down a moment later.

“Let me help you. Okay? Let me find something to use as a sling.”

“Right. Good idea.” Fitz leaned back again, blowing out a slow breath and holding his injured arm at the elbow. He opened an eye to watch her rummage in the shelves of the storage pantry. “Shocked Agent May didn’t teach you to fix something like this.”

Daisy paused. “She did,” she said, going back to her search. “But I don’t -- Here we go.” She turned around with a bundle of cloth and swept toward him, landing on her knees and already tearing into the cloth. “She taught me. But honestly? I’ve never needed it.”

“Just that good, eh?”

Daisy shrugged. “Jacket off or on?”

“Off, I think.”

“I only remember one thing about this type of injury,” she said, helping him gingerly remove his jacket. She sat back as he took a breath to resettle after the jostling.

“What’s that?”

Daisy levelled a look at him. “Nerve damage. If left un... fixed or whatever. For too long.”

Fitz froze, looked up at her. “Nerve damage.”

She nodded, thin-lipped. Fitz looked down at his left hand, tingling already. “We’d better find Jemma quick then.” He gestured for the half-formed sling and she set about tying his arm to his chest securely.

“How are you so calm about this?”

He huffed out a slightly manic laugh. “I’m very well-adjusted. Anyway, what good would crying about it do?”

“I’m not talking about the pain,” she said.

He looked back up at her, somber, flexed his hand into a fist and felt the pain of the pull just to see that he still could. “Neither am I.”

Daisy nodded. They shared a moment of sober reflection. Then the shake of some distant explosion shook them both and Fitz grimaced, hand up to his shoulder.

“Simmons--” they said in unison, and Daisy gave him a hand to his feet before going back to the door to scout.

Fitz looked around properly at the closet Daisy had dragged them into for the first time since waking up. Not quite a regular broom closet--

“Okay, I think we--” Daisy was cut off by the sound of heavy doors and clanking latches as the lights went from on to slightly less on.

“Lockdown,” Fitz said. “It’s about time, honestly.”

“Yeah,” Daisy said, hand on the door, “except now we’re locked in.” She rattled the door as a visual. “Why are we locked in  _ here _ ?”

“Ah. That would be... because...” Fitz turned, looking. “This is not a broom closet. Or rather, it’s not  _ only _ a broom closet,” he amended. He looked up, tracking across the ceiling where the trunk line would be, trying to map a schematic in his head that was still only partially there, therapy-be-damned. He strode toward the back wall, pushing boxes of supplies and custodial equipment out of the way in his haste. He threw up his one good hand when he’d cleared the back wall. “As I thought, it’s control line-adjacent.” He spun back to her, caught his balance as a wave of dizziness threw him off, and said, “There’s no direct access through here, but--”

“There could be, with a little work--”

“Hence, the lockdown.”

“Well, no problem.” Daisy turned toward the door. She readied her hands. “I got this.”

“Wait!” Fitz called, rushing forward. He stumbled as he reached her and luckily she’d turned to meet his shout with an argument because it meant she was right there to kind of catch him -- embarrassing, moving on -- god his head.  “Wait wait wait,” he said again, hand over his aching shoulder.

“Yeah, I heard you. Why?”

“Because we need intel before we go out there. This room is on lockdown for a reason. We don’t know who’s out there or who they’ve compromised --  _ Mack _ \--”

“Okay, I know, okay. Fine.”

He must have gone a little pale or frantic without realizing because she was sitting him down then, telling him to breathe. “I  _ am _ breathing,” he said, petulant. “Obviously.”

Daisy stood by the door, watching through the window. “Look, Fitz. I know you’re worried about Simmons. I am too--”

“I’m  _ worried _ about everyone--”

“I know. I know, okay? We’re gonna get to them, we’re gonna get Mack back to himself. But you’re right, we need to get eyes on the situation.”

“We can’t get eyes in here.”

“You can’t cobble something together out of--”

“What, out of buckets and floor cleaner.”

“I just mean--” Daisy shrugged as Fitz stared at her in disbelief.

Then he shrugged. “Kidding. Yes, of course I can cobble something together. What do you take me for?”

Daisy grinned. “But I thought you said we--”

“Can’t get eyes on the situation,  _ but _ . I  _ can  _ modify the bluetooth hardware in your phone to jumble the base’s internal coms at a relative frequency that can independently modulate--”

“ _ Fitz _ .”

“I can get us working comms.” He looked at her, hand out.  “Well? You have got your phone, haven’t you?”

She rolled her eyes, sighed big.  Handed over her phone. “Are you gonna give it back in pristine condition?” she said, pulling it a little away as he reached for it.

“Ehh, nope,” he said, snatching it away. “Fraid I’ll have to crack it and snap the eh.. whatsit, but I can probably fix it up again when this is all over.”

“How do you know that’ll work? We don’t even know why comms are down, what’s jamming them.”

Fitz set her phone down on a shelf he intended to use as a makeshift workbench and scouted around for a screwdriver or something. “Because,” he said, spying a bucket of rusty handyman tools. “Ooh, legacy.” He spun the S.S.R. branded flathead in his palm. “Eh, it’s what I’d do.”

“What?”

“Knock out the main comm signal range-- it’s what I’d do, simple, fast. Takes out the cell phone range as well,  _ but.  _ I bet they didn’t think--” He put his hand to his pocket and drew out his own earpiece, put it in. “Testing, can you hear me?”

Daisy frowned. “Yeah, I can. Why can I hear you?”

“Because we’re in bluetooth range. Built it in way back, not for communicatin’ o’course. Much too small a range for that. But.”

“You’re gonna use it for that anyway.”

He grinned. “Yep. This will take a few minutes.”

“We’ve got all the time in the world.”

\----

A couple of minutes and a well-worn pace in the concrete floor later, she said, “I was being sarcastic about having all the time--”

“Done.” Fitz sat back on the bucket he’d been using as a stool, red in the face and breathing deliberately slowly.

“Really?” Daisy came over to inspect his handiwork.

“Yeah, f-- eh, finished,” he breathed, lowered his shaking head and brought a hand up to his shoulder.

“Took you long enough,” she joked.

“Well, you know. One hand tied behind my back.”

“How does it work?”

Fitz shrugged one arm -- Daisy thought she detected a grimace when he jostled his injury, but he’d gotten a lot better at hiding that kinda stuff in the last few years.  He put his finger to his own ear and said, “This is Fitz, does anyone read?”

Half a moment later, a cacophony until Coulson’s voice took control. 

“ _ Fitz, where are you? Are you with anyone?” _

“I’m with him, sir,” Daisy said then. “We’re holed up in a broom closet under lock down. What’s going on?”

_ “We’re still getting a handle on that. I’m with May and Mace. We believe Simmons is in the lab. We saw her locking herself into a quarantine room right before visuals cut out.” _

“The lab isn’t too far from here,” Fitz said to Daisy.

“Sir, Fitz and I will make our way to Simmons and then to you. We’ll snag any personnel we can find on the way--”

_ “No. You’re right where I need you.” _

“But sir, I can’t do anything from in here.”

_ “Yes you can. I need you to work the keyboard the way you used to. May, Mace, and I are going to do a sweep and we need you to open doors in front of us and lock them behind us as we go.” _

“I can’t do that from in here.”

“Yes you can,” Fitz said, just as Coulson was saying it. Into his comm, he said, “I can get her set up, sir.”

“No he can’t, sir. Fitz is injured, we have to get him medical attention--”

“Fitz will  _ live _ , sir,” Fitz said overtop of her. He looked her in the eye. “Stand by.”

Daisy keyed off her mic and went after him as he grabbed the bucket of SSR tools and headed toward the back wall.

“What are you doing? The lab isn’t that far, we can get you to Simmons.”

He didn’t even turn to her, just started working on getting the panel off the back wall one-handed. “They need us to do our jobs right now or the whole base could fall.”

“But Fitz--”

“And we can’t knock that door off its hinges or this place won’t be secure.”

“But--”

He turned to her then. “But nothing. I’ve dealt with nerve damage before and I’ll do it again. Now help me with this panel.”

With her efforts added, it was easy to pry off the panel once he had it unscrewed. Inside was a mess of wires, one delicious fat bundle she recognized as the golden egg, the prize eagle, the ... whatever, the awesome possum -- the trunk line that connected the base to the rest of the internet at large. Millions of data streams would be passing through that thing. The base’s main server room must have been on the other side of this wall.

But Fitz didn’t reach for that glorious trove of knowledge. Instead, he tugged gently on a smaller bundle, braced together with a cross connector with an adaptor on the end.  After half a moment’s thought looking at it, he said “oh,” under his breath and pulled his phone out of his pocket.

“You had your phone the whole time and broke  _ mine _ ?”

He looked at her, scratched at his stubble. “Uh... yes. But now you’re gonna use mine. So maybe we’re even, because I don’t even let Simmons touch that.”

“Really?”

“No I’m kidding, only an idiot would keep secrets on his phone.”

Daisy rolled her eyes as he plugged the adaptor into the micro-usb on his phone. He tapped through a couple of screens and handed it over before touching his ear. “Sir, she’s all set up.”

Then he sat back against the wall while Daisy moved in to take over, flush creeping up his cheeks again and breathing carefully.

“Does it hurt?”

“No, it’s a gentle tingle.”

“You don’t have to get sarcastic.”

“I think the situation warrants.”

She tilted her head, allowing it. “Yeah, okay. Sir, I’m into the door controls. Let me know when and where.”

“Good. We’ll work your direction. Stand by.”

Comms went quiet, during which Daisy assumed May and Mace and Coulson were fighting their way to the next checkpoint. She picked at her jeans.

“Been a while, eh?” came Fitz’ soft voice.

“Excuse me?”

“Since you’ve, eh...” He gestured at the makeshift keyboard and input line on his phone screen.

“Oh.” She grinned at the display. “I’ve kinda missed it, you know?  _ This _ used to be my super power.”

“It still is.”

She smiled at him. “Wow, Jemma really hit the jackpot with you.”

His little earnest look immediately vanished into something a lot more embarrassed. “I don’t -- uh--”

“You can stop, okay. It’s not like this is new.”

“That’s not -- I just ... You and Jemma...”

The gravity of what he was attempting to say, or not say, hit her like a ton of bricks.  _ Ward _ . Fake Ward, dating fake her, into which real her poured and then she had to look him in the face, and then-- the  _ Doctor-- _

“We don’t need to talk about it,” she said hastily. “Director, anything for me yet?”

Mace and Coulson responded at the same time, but Coulson prevailed.  _ “In thirty? Yeah, thirty seconds, open hallway B south end.” _

“Thank you for that,” she muttered. The last thing she wanted was to talk about the framework. She tapped in the commands and checked her watch, counting down until she could hit enter, by which time she was hoping Fitz had just forgotten about that topic altogether. When she looked back at him, it appeared he had. He was sitting still, leaning his head back against the metal cabinet behind him, clutching his shoulder and breathing as he tapped the fingers of his injured arm to his thumb one after another, over and over in rotation.  _ Testing himself.  _ She needed to distract him. But... not with the framework. She didn’t love him  _ that _ much.

“Hey can I ask you something?”

The tapping stopped; Fitz opened an eye to look at her askance. “Suuure?” he said, skeptical.

“This might be a stupid question, but I’ve been wondering. How come you never said anything about... your dad?” At Fitz’ wide-eyed look, she backpeddled. “Your  _ real _ dad, I mean. Here. I mean, back when I was searching for mine, whining and complaining all the time about it, you never said word one about yours.”

Fitz looked away, at the ceiling and then at nothing, demeanor immediately defensive, and she didn’t know if it was because he was thinking of the father who left him or the father who stayed and ruined him. Maybe bringing up his dad was a bad idea, but he was already answering: “Why would I have?”

She shrugged, feeling helpless to steer this conversational gambit. “I don’t know,” she said. “We could have...” She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“What, bonded over it?”

“Maybe?” she said, feeling dumb. “Why not? Friends talk about that stuff.”

Fitz shook his head minutely. “How would that have helped?” he said softly.

“I don’t--”

He turned to her then, eyes bright. “Would that have helped you? To hear a story about a father who walked out and never even sent a card. When you were desperately hoping to find out yours had been searching for you? Would it have helped you to know I never even bothered looking for him, with all the resources of Shield at my disposal? Would that have helped you--?”

“Would it have helped  _ you _ ?” She’d had to be loud, to cut him off. Fitz was getting progressively louder as he spoke, and she had to shout, almost, to be heard. But she hadn’t meant to yell at him, and when he went quiet and stared at his shoes, she felt pretty bad about it.

“I’m serious,” she added, quietly. 

“I know you are. But y’don’t need to be. I’m over’im. He’s...” Fitz shook his head. “I’m over him and even if I wasn’t before the fr... Even if I wasn’t before, I definitely am now.”

“And that’s great, but.” Daisy sighed. “Look, that’s not the point. The point is, you had to have been thinking about him, back then. I mean I was talking about my father every five minutes--”

“More, actually--”

“Yeah, probably! And that was about the time you were...” She hand waved desperately, unsure how to signal it without saying it. “Dealing with some pretty rough... stuff. And I heard about what Radcliffe said, what your dad would say to you.”

Fitz dropped his head back against the metal cabinet with a loud clang, groaned.  “Ah. That.”

Daisy peered at him, trying to figure out if she’d struck gold or just dug an even deeper pit for herself. “Well? Can you honestly tell me that while all that was going on with you, you didn’t hear him in your head? Fitz you had to relearn how to write your own name. That really didn’t affect you?”

“Daisy,” Fitz started, then stopped, watching her. “It doesn’t matter, okay? I guess I’m sorry I didn’t share this with you, but I honestly thought it was small potatoes compared to your whole messed up situation.”

“It’s not a competition--”

“Yeah, but it is. When your friend is goin’ through something, you don’t try to say ‘yeah well, here’s my thing, see what you make of that.’ You just try to help them. If you  _ can _ help them.”

“Fitz--”

“No, listen. Can  _ you _ honestly say you wouldn’t have heard my story and thought to yourself, ‘that’s nothing, try having a murderer for a dad.’”

“I take your point.”

“Yes, thank you.”

“Still.”

“No, there’s no ‘still.’”

“Yes, there is,” Daisy said. “There’s a lot of stills. Okay? First.” She ticked it off on a finger. “You said that like you couldn’t help me, and you’re wrong about that. I never would have come to terms with my powers if you hadn’t told me I was okay. I will never forget that day in quarantine.”

“That’s really...” He waved it off.

“And second, okay? Maybe you’re right about me, that I wouldn’t have heard you, that I would have scoffed. I mean you’re right, my situation was pretty effed up, I was stuck in my own crap. But I hope I would have listened. Or at least, I hope when I was alone in my bunk at night, thinking way too much, that your story would come to mind, give me perspective, give me some kind of anchor. That I’m not in this whole weird parental limbo alone.”

Fitz watched her, a beat of quiet. Then: “Well when you put it that way, I sound pretty selfish, don’t I.”

She laughed. “I will punch you in the arm.”

“No thank you. I just managed to put it out of my mind.”

“Mostly,” she continued. “I just hope I’d have the presence of mind to see that my friend was in pain, and listen to him.”

He considered her seriously. “That’s... pretty sappy, even for you.”

Daisy laughed. “Yeah. I know. Sue me.”

Fitz relaxed back against the metal cabinet. “I couldn’t have though, you know that right?”

“What, told me about your dad?”

“Yeah, literally would have taken five years to get it out.” He smiled, so she thought he was making a little joke.

“So, no different than any time you try to explain science.”

“Right, and that’s the abridged version for non-geniuses.”

Things were light again. Daisy felt tightness in her shoulders release. 

After a moment, he said, “I’m still... you know.” He gestured at his head, reminiscent of the way he’d spiral out of himself, or further into himself, before everyone went silent hoping he’d be able to finish, hoping he wouldn’t crash something to the ground in frustration, or leave them in an awkward silence no one wanted to break; no one could speak afterwards, because pretending everything was fine was perverse when Fitz wasn’t there with them.

Daisy frowned. “No, Fitz, you’re fine. Trust me, you’re 100%.”

He shook his head without opening his eyes.  “I’m not. I’m slow. Got most of my words back, but a lot of the math is just...” He looked up then, eyes drifting over the ceiling, but she thought he was looking at something else. He mimed  _ poof _ with one hand.

Daisy scoffed. “Yeah, right. Then how do you do any of the stuff you do?”

“Intuition?” 

She laughed.

“M’not joking. I haven’t even told Jemma about it.”

Daisy stopped laughing, shook her head. “Okay, how?”

“Uh...” he rubbed his forehead, winked up an eye thinking. “It’s like, ehm, the solution is there, I just have to...” He twirled his finger at his ear. “Figure it. It’s less like a math problem and more like a puzzle I just  _ know _ some of the answer to. And have to figure out, sort of... retroactive, the calculus that will get me there.”

“Fitz.” Daisy grinned at him. “That’s ridiculous. Like, you just told me you  _ reinvent _ math, like high level math, every time you work a problem.”

“I wouldn’t quite say--”

“You just did! You literally just described-- Wow. Like. Wait, can you count cards? Do I need to schedule me and you some Vegas time?” She cut off his next words -- “Fine, Simmons can come, but you can’t tell her what we’re doing--”

“Are you comparin’ me to Rain Man, just now? Because I’m not sure that’s quite--”

“Oh whatever, you’re--”

“ _ Daisy? _ ” Coulson sounded out of breath and Daisy rushed back to Fitz’ phone still wired into the wall. 

“I’m here, hit me.”

“ _ Hallway B, Southeast door. We’re picking up Simmons and then we’re coming for you. Sit tight. _ ”

Daisy tapped on Fitz’ phone screen, executing commands. “Wait, sir-- What’s going on? Do you know? We saw Mack--”

“ _ We saw him. Unfortunately, he saw us, too. Daisy... _ ”

Daisy paused typing. “Boss?”

_ “ _ I _ s Fitz okay? Mack said--” _

“Fitz is fine, sir,” Fitz said. “Also he can hear you.”

“ _ Let’s keep it that way. He seemed focused on you, finding you.” _

Fitz looked at Daisy as she was turning to look back at him. He shrugged. “Did... did he say why, sir?”

“ _ No such luck. Just stay put and we’ll come find you. _ ”

“Will do, sir,” Fitz said, as Daisy was saying, “I can get us to you, sir. We can meet up halfway.”

_ “You’ll do no such thing,” _ Coulson replied. “ _ I don’t know what his goals are or who else might have been turned like Mack. We don’t know who is friend or foe out there right now. Stay. Put.” _

Daisy looked at Fitz, who looked vaguely ill at the notion that he was the cause of all of this. “Fitz, you okay?”

“Yeah, yeah I’m--” He sat back, looking pale. “Why’s this happening. Aida and then the framework and the D-- Can’t we get just one break?”

She knew he was really asking couldn’t  _ he _ get just one break. Fair. “Don’t worry. We’ll figure this out, and we’ll get Mack back to himself and anyone else who’s been... I don’t know, brainwashed? It’ll be fine.”

He nodded. “Fine, yeah.”

“We just have to sit tight and wait for Coulson to find us. Then we can all get out of here together and figure it out.”

He nodded again, but didn’t say anything.

“Fitz,” she said after a moment, “about the ... framework stuff...”

“We don’t have to talk about it,” he said hastily.  “I can’t imagine how hard it must have been. For... for--”

“Yeah, it sucked. But it must have sucked for you too, and if you need to...” He was studiously avoiding her eye, staring ahead at the floor, stealing little glances but never lingering. The fingers of his injured arm flexed and relaxed, and she put her own hand over them. He looked up at her at the contact, eyes wide, startled. “If it would help you.”

He just stared at her another moment, then looked away. Daisy waited for him to say something, anything, but he stayed quiet, worrying his bottom lip like he sometimes did when he was first injured years ago. When he was thinking about what to say or whether to say it at all.

She sighed a little, sat back to wait for Coulson. She could only do so much to get him to talk, she couldn’t hold a conversation all on her own, so.

A few minutes later, though, he opened his mouth, spoke so softly she almost didn’t hear him. “When,” he began, hesitant. “When you were under the sway of Hive--” He cut himself off, glanced at her and away again. 

“I didn’t mean that, Fitz. I would never have done that to you, I swear--”

“No, no, I know, that’s not what I-- I just, I was wondering. While you were with him, did he ever... were you ever...  _ with _ him.” He raised his brows, innocent and chewing on his lip. “You know, he looked like Ward and everything, and he could make you do... whatever, so, I thought. Well, did he? You don’t have to answer, I just thought--”

It honestly took her a minute to process his stumbling question. When it resolved into coherence, she almost laughed. “No! No, god. Ew, can you imagine?” She looked back at Fitz just in time to see him give her a funny little glance and then look down at his hands, where he was massaging the one strapped up in a sling. 

He nodded to himself. “Yeah, yeah of course not.” 

Daisy shook her head, watching him, and then when he didn’t speak again but took a shudderingly deep breath, she figured it out. Aida.

“Oh. Oh my God, Fitz. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean-- I mean, yeah ew, but no. Do you... do you wanna talk about it?”

He shrugged one shoulder. “What’s there to talk about?”

“She... she  _ made  _ you--”

“It wasn’t like that,” he snapped, clearly upset. “I, I was there. I was... I made that decision.”

“You were under her control! She manipulated every aspect of your life to get into your head! Fitz, what happened wasn’t your fault. None of it was, but especially not  _ that _ .”

“You’re makin’ too big a deal out of it.” He levered himself out of his seat to pace. He still refused to meet her eye. “I was there, in that world. That was me. I did those things, I chose those things--”

“Like I chose to choke the life out of you? Like I  _ chose _ to break every bone in Mack’s body? Like I chose to betray everyone I’ve ever loved! Do you really think so badly of me, Fitz!” 

“Of course not!” He threw his good arm out as he rounded on her. 

“Then how can you think if of yourself!” Daisy stood to be on a level with him, not just to get the upper hand in what had suddenly become a Very Important Conversation, but also because he sorta looked like he could fall over at any moment.

“It’s different, it’s just...  _ different _ \--” he said, begged. 

“Okaaaay. Well what if I had said yes when you asked if Hive had made me get up close and personal? I wasn’t dying inside, watching myself do things I didn’t want to do when I was under his sway, Fitz. I  _ wanted _ to follow him, I would have wanted to do that, too. Would you be standing here telling me that it was totally on the up and up? That it wasn’t a gross violation?”

“No of course not, but you-- it’s different with me--”

“Why, because you’re not a woman? A weak little woman--?”

“No! Because I’m -- because it wasn’t your fault that--” He faltered as he watched her, as he ran the conclusions of his own words through his brain, as he did the math right in front of her, dropped to his knees and stared into nothing, shoulders shaking. She dropped to the floor in front of him, he muttered without seeming to know that she was there except that he kept looking up at her like he wasn’t sure he should be saying any of this aloud: “It was all my fault, all of it, and, and, I don’t deserve pity--”

“Fitz,” Daisy said, grabbing him by the shirt sleeves and hugging him close. “No one deserves that, this wasn’t your fault. Fitz, you have to hear me, okay?” He shook in her arms and she thought, not for the first time, that they  _ really _ needed to find another psychologist and just keep them on hand 24/7. “Are you listening to me, Fitz? Because I need you to be okay.”

He nodded, but he was still shaking. She pushed back to look in him the face, was unsurprised to see streaks of wet down his cheeks. He’d always been quick to tears and she’d gone through the requisite phases of “what is this boy” through to “good men cry” when it came to Fitz. He was a grump who wore his heart on his sleeve and was rarely ashamed of it. She usually loved that about him, but now it just  _ hurt _ . 

“Hey.”

He shifted his vacant gaze to see her. Said nothing.

“Hey,” she tried again. “Say something. Fitz, say something to me.”

Fitz opened his mouth, blinked a fresh trail down his face. Said nothing.

“Say you believe me, that it wasn’t your fault, that-- that neither of us is to blame for someone else’s evil actions.”

Fitz licked his lips. “I, I believe you. I do. Still.”

“No, there’s no ‘still’.”

Fitz smiled, a ghost of a smile but there. “Not nice to use my own words against me.”

Daisy grinned back, relieved. Fitz fell back to rest against the wall behind him, and Daisy shifted around to sit next to him, knee touching his. Together they might just make up three quarters of a whole sane person, but she thought they’d be okay.

“How’m I gonna tell Jemma?”

“You haven’t even talked about this with Simmons? Oh man, you are a wreck. You need to talk about this!”

“I did just say I was going to--”

“Yeah but you haven’t yet--”

“I didn’t think I could!”

“Well now you know better--”

“And I did just say I was going to!”

Daisy smiled at the opposite wall, exhausted. “I think we bonded.”

“Turns out friends can talk about stuff they have in common. Who knew?”

“I knew.”

“Shut it, Daisy.”

“I will punch you in the arm.”


End file.
